Experiencing bio-diversity with photography.

One of the things that I am getting a better and better respect for is just how many different animals, plant, fish, bird and insects there are in a small urban area.  And sometimes, you can see it many times, and never even notice until you take a good picture and are able slow down and look at it!

A few days ago, I was watching some gulls, waiting for an Osprey to hopefully come by for a supper snack.  We had seen an Osprey hunting here a week ago so I had high hopes.  I noticed some of the gulls did not look like gulls to me...Then I saw one that looked a little bigger body, and a little greyer.  That caught my eye and I was hoping he would hunt up a fish in front of me...but he landed on the far shoreline..and was not acting like a Gull at all..more like a Heron!

I did not get a great look, since he was at least 150 meters (500 feet) away (yes, I checked!).  But when I got home, with the hints based on the way he moved, Dawne and I came to the conclusion it was a Black Crowned Night Heron.  I had barely heard of these, but by paying attention to the world around me, I saw one..and went back the next day and saw him again.

While I was waiting there I saw one of the most finely delicately colored butterfly.

 I was musing over this and decided to bring my camera to work and go for what our receptionist calls "One of my walkies" in the back 40.  I managed to capture a lurking Leopard frog, who was one of about 10 I saw, including some big and some smaller than I have ever seen.

And how about this tiny moth.  That is a regular blade of grass he is barely overhanging

Or these mating Dragonflies.

These were tiny leopard frogs.

This Heron caught my eye on the way home..

 While tracking the Great Blue Heron for other shots, I noticed one of the ever present "Gulls" was acting different and looked different too..

 It was of course a Common Tern, not a Gull.  But I had always missed noticing the different.

I had also recently learned about Killdeer...



Then I saw a Green Heron, which I had never seen before either.

I even saw a painted turtle peeking it's head out of the lake..

So in a very eclectic 2 days, I saw over a dozen different creatures right in my own backyard and surrounding neighborhood.  If you open your eyes, it is amazing how much there is there!
Then today, walking in front of the office, I noticed something else I had never seen before..

Every day opens new doors to the world!!

Water Water Everywhere...

Water fascinates me.  The duality it represents is awe inspiring.  When I want to feel calm serenity..I go to water...

And when I want to feel the power of nature and feel like there are forces much bigger than me in the universe, I also rely on water...every canyon, every waterfall, every grain of sand...

The other thing water does for me is all the reflection potentials..

But have you ever really looked at water and how it moves. Zoomed in and seen a drop of water hit? Up close, water still holds a lot of surprises!

Amateur Photography..helping you see the world differently..

When I first got interested in photography, it was about 30 years ago.  You had to be aware of the cost of film, and the cost of development.  And when you were done, you had a shoe box full of pictures that nobody ever saw.  But I still loved it.  When I was 16, my parents bought a Pentax ME from my brother who had gotten interested in photography and then moved on to other hobbies.  He had left it with me for years, and my parents finally gave it to me for Christmas.  It was a great camera and taught me lots.  I had a Takumar prime lens that had a mind numbing reach of 135mm.  Everything was manual aperture and manual focus.  That is the camera I took to some great airshows, and took some great pictures of my kids when they were born.

But the cost kept us from really using it.  We kept it, but it was only for special occasions.  I still need to go though and convert some of those old pictures to digital.

Then we started getting into the digital age, getting cheap and then better and better camera gear.  But they were all point and shoot.  My first digital camera would loose pictures. The quality was abysmal.  But it started rekindling my interests.

Then, the Snowbirds were coming to town, in June 2008.  My wife, Dawne mentioned to me she would not stop me from getting a digital SLR and 5 minutes later I was in Henry's checking out their supply of Canon's.

I settled for an Xsi with the included lens and a 70-300mm zoom lens (for an extra $99).  Since then, I have been falling in love with photography all over again. 

I have gone to air shows and been thrilled to get pictures that made me get in the action again.  Holding a camera that let me see the details of the paint scheme as the planes flew over.  I got better pictures than I had ever dreamt of getting.

All of these above shots were taken less than a month after getting the new camera at the Carp airshow.  I still had alot to learn, and alot of practice to get.

I also started seeing the world differently.  I used barely notice the world around me.  I lived here for years and had never noticed how many big names sports teams hung out in the area:

Cardinals

Blue Jays

Baltimore Orioles

Mighty Ducks

Redwings...(yes, he is chasing a heron...)

The Flames

The Jets...

I also started noticing the clouds above me...

And then there were the bugs and animals that have always been there, just unnoticed.

And now, everywhere I go, I tend to see what I have been missing.

Do you see a face in this splash?

The more I look and the more I think about it, the more I know that having camera gear that has a hope of capturing some of these pictures is pulling me out of my day to day rut, and letting me see into a world that was always there, but that I still never saw.  I recently had a friend ask me why bother getting such a camera setup.  The pictures are nice, but she never really takes pictures.  My response was I didn't either, but once I had the ability to get pictures worth keeping...there is no stopping me!